our side of the mountain
by nowdefunct2
Summary: After siding with the mages against Meredith, Hawke and his companions flee for the mountains in hopes of waiting out the chaos.


In the ensuing chaos of the battle against Meredith and the templars they run Northwards, towards the mountains. Aveline, Donnic and a handful of the most loyal among the city guard escort them past the city gates and to the foot of Sundermount, where Aveline says a final goodbye. Unsentimental to the end, her last words to them are to lie low, to keep moving, and to avoid cities till talk of what's happened has died down. She embraces each one of them in turn, and they part without any acknowledgement of the possibility of never reuniting. Still, she stays to watch their passage along the mountain road, turning her back only once they've disappeared around the bend.

The girls, one being Dalish and the other having been locked up in a tower until relatively recently, find the mountain air invigorating. Like a pair of wild animals they delight in foraging for edible roots and berries, in sunbathing by the shores of streams, and in frolicking naked in the cool water. Varric, forever a city boy at heart, has more difficulty adapting to the loss of his material comforts. They sleep in tents, with nothing to cushion their backs except grass, and hot food is a privilege that has to be earned through the exercise of hunting and cooking.

Hawke and Fenris graciously volunteer to take charge of the hunting. Most evenings the pair head out together just before dusk, reappearing hours later with flushed, sweaty faces and small game, mostly, birds and rabbits, slung across their shoulders. Since no one else can cook Fenris takes care of skinning the carcasses, seasoning the meat with herbs gathered by the girls, and roasting it over their campfire. Although he and Hawke repeatedly insist they are perfectly fine without help Varric decides one evening to head into the woods after them - the alternative is to hang around the camp, where the girls are once again skinny dipping in a nearby stream. Around a particularly dense copse of trees he kneels to tie the laces on his boots, and it is there that he overhears a succession of whimpers that makes him back away immediately, his laces still untied. The voice, though strained to higher pitches and thickened by lust, is unmistakeable, and Varric fears he'll never be able to see Hawke the same way again. So he gives up hunting and takes up fishing instead. Untrained in the art of fishing, he accomplishes this by showering any available water body with hails of arrows until at least one manages to spear a minnow or, if he's lucky, a trout. Merrill says this is not how fishing is usually done; she offers to teach him the Dalish way, but Varric turns her down since the Dalish way doesn't involve Bianca.

They wander the Vimmark mountains endlessly, encountering only wild beasts and the occasional evil spirit, mute beings that offer them no news of the outside world. Their isolation bestows a simplicity, a stillness upon the days, and in that stillness is a romance they'll never find again. Each one of them knows it, even Bethany, who worries daily about the fate of her friends in the Circle, and even Varric, who dreams nightly of the Hanged Man, of frothing ale and the warmth of his former bed. Nothing is required from them besides walking and waiting - waiting for the world on either side of the mountains to quiet down. Sometimes, with the ways in which they pass the time - with card games, jokes and chatter - it feels like they're waiting for the rain to stop so they can go back outside, like they're children again.

They play Wicked Grace a hundred times. They play till the cards are barely legible from the creases and the dirt. Their hair grows long. Fenris catches a glimpse of himself in a puddle of water one day and pauses for a moment, studying the loose white curls that have crept almost all the way to the base of his neck. Hawke hangs back, lets the others pass them by. "You look good", he says quietly, and although Fenris says nothing he holds off on asking to borrow Hawke's dagger.

Once they do encounter intelligent life on the mountains - on a rainy morning they seek shelter in a cave, placing bets as they enter on another game of Wicked Grace while Merrill, who has racked up a debt of ten gold (ten gold more than she has), pleads with them to play something else. In the dark there is the familiar sound of knives being brandished, of bows being pulled taut, and they discover that the cave is already occupied by a band of mercenaries. Thank the Maker, cries Varric to the uncomprehending mercenaries, before knocking out the leader with a pinning shot. He's delighted to finally wield Bianca against a more formidable opponent than hapless freshwater fish, and when they rifle through the loot and uncover a stash of alcohol and cakes he can hardly contain himself. All dwarves have two throats, he says, tenderly planting a kiss on a bottle of mead like it's a baby - one for water, and one for alcohol - and they're lucky he hasn't died from thirst yet.

They agree unanimously that tonight they must feast. There is dessert and drink thanks to the mercenaries, and when the weather clears late in the afternoon, they venture outside to catch their main course. Hawke and Fenris bring home a deer, and since Merrill is vegetarian (the only vegetarian blood mage in Thedas, Fenris mutters archly when she's out of earshot) she and Bethany set about making a separate stew out of wild potatoes and carrots.

They already drunk well before dark. Once Hawke has been plied with enough mead he runs up to the campfire, the flaming heart of their little circle, and volunteers to be their bard for the evening. His singing is surprisingly virtuosic, though no one can understand why his repertoire consists entirely of hymns about Andraste. Bethany informs his puzzled audience that seven year old Hawke, who had not yet acquired a taste for lockpicking and fighting, was in fact an alto in the Lothering chantry choir, and for the Feastday celebrations had been selected to perform a solo that in the end went to another child because of his crippling stage fright. This puts such images in Fenris' head that he keels backwards onto the damp earth, his whole body shaking with giggles. Hawke watches the elf adoringly, not realizing in his drunken state that Fenris and all of their friends are laughing at him. _I'm blessed_ , Hawke thinks, _as dirt poor as I was six years ago but happy. Fenris and I are finally living together - all of the mountains are our home._

Hawke is blessed. They are all blessed. They fall asleep in a ring around the fire as it burns down, not one of them sober enough to keep watch over the camp or to stoke the embers, but they sleep safely under the stars and wake up unharmed in the morning light.

Where to next?

There comes a point when the question is always on their minds, unresolved because the trail of destruction they've left in their wake has won them more enemies than friends in every land. Merrill half jokingly suggests Antiva, where the winters are mild and where they have exactly one friend - that exceedingly handsome (in her words) and flirtatious elf who propositioned Hawke on these very mountains eons ago. Bethany giggles, but Fenris glares at Merrill so fiercely that it takes her a few days to recover and speak to him again.

One day Hawke wakes up, as he sometimes does, with a craving for fresh eggs, the kind that only exists on farms. This time the ache is different - it's travelled upwards, all the way to his chest, mutating into a sudden, violent longing he hasn't felt in six years. Sleep doesn't make it go away, and Hawke realizes that even though he isn't sure he wants Lothering to be home again, he'd at least like to see it one more time. Eventually Fenris steps in and asks if he's been a bad influence. "What?" asks Hawke, taken aback. "You've been brooding all week," says Fenris, and Hawke finally reveals his growing obsession with freshly laid eggs. He poses a question then, feeling absurd, uncommonly clumsy as he scrambles to find the right phrasing. It feels like he's proposing or something.

And then the elf grins like he _has_ proposed. His grin lights up his whole face. "Yes", he says, "Of course I will. I thought you'd never ask."

By the month of Kingsway the Vimmark mountains are deserted once again. The wild animals and evil spirits are relieved; they roam freely through silent caves, through black nights unbroken by firelight. The air changes. The leaves turn crisp. Cold winds come to pluck them off the trees, to spin them towards the earth where they settle in layers. Soon all traces of Hawke and his companions are erased; the fire pits they dug are gone, buried deep beneath the red leaves along with the detritus - the charred bones, the seeds and ashes, the empty bottles of mead. And as the wind rushes down the mountain and towards the surrounding cities their footsteps disappear too, one by one, until no tracker, however savvy, can tell where they went next, and fall is upon all of the Free Marches.


End file.
